Bugs Bite

CHAPTER ONE: The First Encounter

'Don't let the bed bugs bite,' Mom said. Then she fly-kissed him, turned off the lights, and left, shutting the door behind her and leaving her son in utter dark.

It was a while before Avish slept. Quite a while, in fact. For he could hear the muffled quarrel going on between his parents in the room across the hall. He couldn't really make out the words, but then again, he didn't want to. What he wanted was to storm into their room and shout in their faces That's enough! but what did he know? He was just a kid.

Thinking of bed-bugs and the Boogies at school, he finally went to sleep after he began to lose track of time.

The first encounter of eleven-year Avish with his ghost would never have occurred had it not been for the humming and whistling that woke him about four hours later that night. At precisely two in the morning.

Then again, so much wouldn't have happened if he hadn't met Bhoo. And so much would have happened.

Even before his eyes opened, the beautifully haunting sound penetrated his ears. With no sight, therefore, he absorbed the hum-and-whistle startlingly well, such that he was certain that the source of the tune was within the room itself. That alarmed him to some extent, but he was still sleepy as it was. For all young Avish knew, he could be hallucinating, or dreaming, or maybe it was his parents' rowing that he'd mistaken for music. It was some fine music, at that. Almost surreal, like something right out of the pages of a fairytale. It took Avish a moment to take in the verity that the melody was very real. And yes, the musician was in the same room as him. The aura of another presence was unmistakable, even for a young lad like him. An unfamiliar aura.

That hit hard, and fear began to settle in.

Slowly propping himself into an upright position on the bed, eyes shut tight, Avish felt the hair on his arms stand in attention. He also experienced a strange tingle at the back of his neck, the kind of which he had never experienced before. He knew if he dared to open his eyes, he'd see the one emancipating the mesmerizing melody.

Meanwhile, the music picked pace, grew louder. It filled his blind world. Someone was snapping their fingers too now, synchronizing with each beat, each whistle. Someone near him. Someone whose humming and whistling and snapping had such power, such conviction, that it was pragmatically controlling Avish.

Beckoning to him.

Urging him.

Maybe it was a whole gang. A gang of crazy adults who ate youngsters alive, like in that movie Roy had been talking about in school. It had seemed silly, then, in a classroom, with friends by his side. It hardly seemed ludicrous now.

He would pay for even the Boogies to accompany him at the moment. Avish was suddenly so scared, and gruesome images kept popping up in his mind, that he thought he'd piss himself.

He wanted to scream, oh yes, he wanted to scream so bad.

But the music had ahold of him. It had blocked his motor signals; immobilized him, all the while cradling him in its arms.

Abruptly, all noise waned.

Silence treaded its footsteps, and this particular silence was even more eerie than the music itself. Avish's heart started pounding in every organ, every tissue, every cell of his body. He was convinced that a child-killer gang, like the one from the movie Roy had told them about, had somehow found him. And now that the music had stopped, they'd complete the real job they were here to do.

Avish desperately wanted to open his eyes. Yet, in the end, he was but a scared child.

'Open your eyes,' a voice susurrated just then, reading his thoughts. 'I'm not here to hurt you.'